Before I Let You Go(98)

“Sorry,” I say, and she shakes her head and draws in a deep breath.

“No, no . . . it’s okay. Thank you. I really could do with some tea.”

I look up at Sam.

“We can leave the room?” he suggests.

Mom shakes her head again, and hesitates for a long moment before she says, “Obviously, in coming here, I’ve relaxed some rules. I think this should be one of them, too.”

“Really?” I’m stunned, but Mom looks at me helplessly.

“Please don’t . . . just, don’t mention it to Robert.”

So we drink the tea together, and it shouldn’t be a momentous ritual—but for us, it is. Mom wouldn’t have shared food with someone from outside the community in decades, and even as she sips at her tea, she looks slightly nervous—as if the elders might burst in any second and catch her. So to try to ease the awkward atmosphere, I make small talk.

“How was the flight?” I ask her.

“Good, good . . .”

More awkward silence, then Mom makes an attempt to break it.

“This house is wonderful.”

“Thank you.”

And after several rounds of this, the conversation begins to flow a little. But we don’t talk about Annie, and it occurs to me that we haven’t discussed her much at all since she died. We’ve discussed the funeral, but the subject of the beloved sister and daughter we’re burying remains somehow still too difficult to address.

Sam lingers in the background for a while, occasionally moving into my field of vision. When I meet his eye, he only offers me a reassuring smile. I’m so glad he is here. I smile back, sadly, gratefully. When Daisy starts to fuss, he gently takes her from Mom’s arms to put her down for a nap. After he leaves the room, Mom asks hesitantly, “So everything ready for tomorrow?”

“Of course it is.” I say the words too sharply, and Mom winces. She knew the answer to that question before she asked it. Besides, of course I’ve organized the funeral—I’ve organized everything for the last twenty years. Mom tries now to offer me a sad smile.

“At least Daisy is okay?’

“Daisy is fine for now. There are a lot of decisions to be made in the next few days.”

Mom’s eyebrows knit together, and then she gives me a critical frown.

“Are you and Sam going to . . .”

I rise, and my stomach is churning.

“We haven’t talked about it.”

“Well, you look like you’re pretty well set up. I’m sure Daisy will be very happy here.”

Now the urge to snap at her is so strong that I have to wrap my arms around my chest to hold it in. I try to stare her down, just like Annie might have done. I’m incredulous—does Mom not realize that the obvious alternative to Sam and me raising Daisy would be Daisy’s grandmother caring for her? Apparently not, and even if she wanted to, I’d never allow it. Surely she must have considered it. Maybe she even raised the possibility with Robert and he said no. He probably thinks that Daisy is tainted—the dirty, sinful daughter of a filthy, sinful drug addict.

“I have things to do,” I say, my tone short. “Make yourself at home.”

I head straight for Sam and Daisy. I find them in the rocking chair in the nursery, Sam completely at home with the baby in his arms. I smile at him sadly from the doorway, and I think about all the dreams that we had. I’ve imagined him here in this very room, settling a child off to sleep. I just assumed it would be our own.

“Everything okay?”

He asks me the question in a soft whisper. I sigh and shrug.

“You know how when someone has hurt you, it takes so little to reopen the wound?”

Sam tilts his head toward me, indicating that I should join him. I move toward the rocking chair slowly then sink down onto the armrest. He slides his arm around my waist, and I lean into him.

“I know your mom has let you down, and there is a lot of history there. But try to keep in mind that she is here. You weren’t even sure that she would come, and yet she has. She said in the car that it was very difficult to get away, and I wondered if that meant that her husband didn’t want her to come. Maybe it cost your mother to be here—and she has just lost her daughter. This is difficult for all of you—for all of us. But Deborah was Annie’s mother. She might not show it, but she must be suffering.”

“She probably thinks that Annie deserved what happened to her.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But she’s here, and that counts for something, right?”

On the day of my sister’s funeral, I wake at dawn to feed her baby, then I dress in black from head to toe, a black dress, black tights and black shoes. I pair it all with a heavy gray overcoat, and then at the last minute, I add a bright pink scarf. Annie always loved bright colors, and it doesn’t seem right to forget about that now. I put my hair in a bun and coat it with hairspray so that it is absolutely still and fixed in place. I don’t wear makeup. There is no point. I know that I’ll cry it off.

I survey myself in the mirror and note the puffiness around my eyes, and the awful gray bags that now linger beneath them. When Sam wakes, he joins me in the bathroom, and he wraps his arms around me and he says, “I love you, Lexie.”

“I love you, too.”

Daisy, who had been resting in the bouncer on the floor beside my feet, lets out a strange gurgling sound, and I look down at her in alarm. Then I realize—the sound could almost have been a laugh. She is staring at the swishing movement of my skirt around my knees and, for some reason, this has her amused. I turn a little, testing the theory, and she makes the sound again—this time achieving something even closer to a giggle.